Creole Belle (Dave Robicheaux 19)

“I went over to Burke Hall at UL and checked out some of your artwork. I thought it was pretty keen,” she said. “What I didn’t understand was why all the figures look like they’re made of rubber. They made me think of ectoplasm or maybe spermicide being squeezed out of a tube. My favorite painting was the abstract, the one that’s all smears and drips, kind of like a big handkerchief someone with a brain hemorrhage blew his nose on.”

Pierre Dupree reached out and took her hand in his. “You have eyes that are like violets. But they don’t fit in your face or with the rest of your coloration,” he said. “Why is that? You’re a woman of mystery.”

She felt his hand tighten on hers, squeezing her fingers into a cluster of carrots.

“No answer??

? he said. “No more cute one-liners from our clever little kike from ‘Me-ami’?”

The pain in her hand traveled like a long strand of barbed wire up her wrist and into her arm and shoulder and throat. She felt her eyes water and her bottom lip begin to tremble.

He tightened his grip. “Are you trying to tell me something?” he said. “Did you think perhaps you fucked with the wrong people? Have you experienced a change of heart? Nod if that’s the case.”

With her left hand, she fumbled the top off the teapot and threw the scalding water in his face. A cry rose from Dupree’s throat as if he were being garroted. He jabbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, pushing back his chair, his shrimp cocktail spraying in a pulpy red shower on the tablecloth.

“Waste not, want not. Here’s the rest of it,” she said, and emptied the pot on top of him.

Dupree crashed backward on the floor, his arms wrapped around his head, his legs thrashing. Both of his friends had kicked back their chairs and were headed for her, their faces twisted with rage. She pulled Clete Purcel’s blackjack from her tote sack, the wood handle clenched tightly in her palm. The blackjack was weighted at the large end with a lump of lead the size of a golf ball, snugged tight inside stitched leather and mounted on a spring that generated a level of torque and velocity that could knock an ox unconscious. She swung it backward across the mouth of the fleshy man and heard his teeth break against his lips. The man with the greased-back hair got one hand on her shirt, but she whipped the blackjack down on his collarbone and saw his mouth open and his shoulder drop as though it had been severed from a string. She was wearing alpine shoes with lug soles, and she kicked him in the groin so hard the blood drained from his face and his knees buckled and he took on the appearance of a griffin crouched in the middle of the room. She whipped the blackjack across his ear and knocked him sideways into a stack of chairs.

She shut the door that gave onto the main restaurant, her heart pounding. When Pierre Dupree tried to pull himself up, she swung the blackjack down on his neck and shoulders, then hit him across the forearm and the point of one knee.

The fleshy man was trying to raise himself by holding on to the table and had pulled the tablecloth onto the floor. His teeth were broken off at the gums, and a string of blood and saliva hung from his chin. She swung the blackjack across the side of his face and heard the bone crack. “Treat this as a positive, a great opportunity for weight loss. I’ve heard soup tastes lovely when it’s sucked through a straw,” she said.

She surveyed the room, catching her breath, the blackjack hanging loosely from her hand. “If you’re thinking about dropping the dime on me, ask yourself if you want a repeat performance,” she said. “I hate to tell you this, but you guys aren’t the first team. Maybe you should think about a career change. Maybe jobs in a Pee-wee Herman theme park.”

She walked back to Pierre Dupree and squatted down at eye level with him, tapping the end of the blackjack on his nose. His eyes were out of focus, his face mottled with burns. “Think this was bad? I’ve had men do things to me with their penises that make this look like a cakewalk. Next time I’m going to turn you into a quadriplegic.” She nudged one of his eyes wider with the tip of the blackjack. “One other thing: Your grandfather is Jewish, but you called me a kike. You’re a puzzle, Pierre. I might have to look you up again. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

She wiped off her blackjack on his necktie and put it in her tote bag, then slipped on her shades and tied her scarf on her head and went out the side exit and crossed the street to the Caddy. A soft rain was blowing along the avenue, and the pink neon glow of the restaurant inside the mist made her think of the cotton candy her mother once bought her on a visit to Coney Island.

CLETE PURCEL HAD spent most of the afternoon lying on a recliner under the live oaks by his cottage in his scarlet knee-length Everlast boxing trunks, a cooler packed with ice and five brands of foreign beer by his side, a pork roast turning on the rotisserie, the smoke drifting through the trees onto the bayou. He had self-medicated to the point where he had almost forgotten his wall-to-wall tryst with Varina Leboeuf and the fact that he had probably gone on tape and may have joined the great American porn pantheon of people like Johnny Wadd Holmes. The latter conclusion was one he could not deal with in the midst of a hangover that was already of monstrous proportions. Time to cauterize the head with a little more flakjuice, he thought. He cracked another bottle of St. Pauli Girl and chugged it to the bottom, upending it until every ounce of foam had drained down his throat.

Even when rain began to patter on the leaves overhead, he could not make himself get off the recliner and go inside. So he stayed under the trees throughout the shower, the rain hissing on the grill, the smoke wrapping itself around him, a tugboat on the bayou blowing its horn as though in mockery.

Then he saw his Caddy turn off East Main and bounce over the dip in the motor-court driveway and approach his cottage and parking space. He dropped his empty bottle on the grass and stood up, the trees and rooftops tilting, the Saint Augustine–like carpet nails under his bare feet. Gretchen got out of the car and locked the door and swung her tote bag over her shoulder.

“I need to have a word with you,” he said.

“What about?”

“Other than you boosting my car and my sap and my nine-Mike, no problem at all,” he replied.

“You got some Lysol?”

“Under the lavatory. What do you want it for?”

“To tidy up. What’s for eats?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Come inside. It’s raining,” she said. “Are you getting drunk again?”

She left the front door of the cottage open. When he went inside, she was spraying his blackjack with disinfectant and cleaning the leather cover with a wad of paper towels.

“Care to tell me where you went in my car?” he said.

“To New Orleans. I had a chat with Pierre Dupree and a couple of guys he was having lunch with. Did Alafair Robicheaux call?”

“Alafair? What does Alafair have to do with this?”